50 Honey & Bee Facts

Honey Dipper

  1. There are ancient Sumerian and Babylonian records that date back to 2100 BC that describe honey, but this was only the first record of the sweet stuff.  Historians believe that honey is likely way older than this.
  2. When the Spaniards arrived in the Americas in 1600 AD, they found that the natives had already developed beekeeping.  So, odds are that the practice of humans using honey (for consumption or health reasons) was much more wide spread than records show.
  3. Honey never expires – never!  Supposedly, there was a 1,000 year old jar of honey found in an Egyptian tomb, and the brave soul that dared tasting it said it was delicious.  We’ll take his word for it.
  4. To produce 1 pound of honey, the honey bees have to visit an estimated 2,000,000 flowers and fly an estimated 55,000 miles.
  5. 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey is produced per honey bee during its entire lifetime (which is a short 45 days during the summer).
  6. A bee colony can consist of 30,000 – 60,000 bees, and only one those bees can be the queen.
  7. Each colony has a unique odor so the bees always know where home is.
  8. The worker bees and honey bees are 99% female.  So, what do the male bees do all day?  They’re reserved for the queen, and they’re called drones.
  9. The brain of a worker bee and honey bee tiny, but they have the densest neuropile tissue of any animal.
  10. When the honey bees return to the hive (which they find easily because they have an impeccable sense of smell), they do a little dance to communicate with the other honey bees.  That dance helps the other bees find where the flowers are.
  11. To get the nectar, honeybees pull the liquid from the flower with its long, tube-like tongue.  It then stores the honey in one of its two stomachs.  Think of the stomach as a kangaroo pouch for honey; it makes it not so gross when you read what’s next.
  12. The amount of honey 1 bee can hold can equal her total weight, but to get to this point, she must visit 100-1,500 flowers.
  13. When the honey bee returns to the hive, she opens her mouth and a worker bee comes up and sucks the nectar out of her stomach honey pouch.  The worker bee then chews on the nectar for a while to fill it full of enzymes; in other words, she’s turning those natural complex sugars in the nectar to simple sugars that makes the honey more digestible and keeps bacteria away.  It’s not bee vomit.
  14. Nectar is 80% water, so the bees have to work together to pull some of the moisture out of the chewed up, enzyme goodness; to do this, they spread the soon-to-be-honey over the honeycombs.   This helps the water evaporate much more quickly and leaves a yummy, gooey honey.
  15. A honeycomb always has six sides.
  16. Actually, these bees mean business when it comes to drying out the honey.  They don’t just sit back and let Mother Nature take its course with the evaporation process; heck no, these girls know how to get things done!  After the honey is spread-out over the honeycombs, the worker bees get to flappin’ those wings to help speed up the drying process.
  17. And once the honey is nice and gooey, the girls seal off the honeycomb with a bit of beeswax.
  18. Bees are totally self-efficient.  A colony of bees can eat around 120-200 pounds of honey per year.
  19. 2 tablespoons of honey can fuel a honey bee long enough to fly 1 time around the world.
  20. The queen only eats royal jelly, which is created by the worker bees and helps plump up the queen.  It is unknown if it’s this jelly or because the queen is overly-spoiled, but she lives 50 times longer than any of the other bees.  We need to get our hands on this royal jelly stuff.
  21. Out of about 20,000 bee species, there are only 4 that make honey.
  22. There are over 300 distinct types of honey available in the US.
  23. A typical beehive can produce 400 pounds of honey per year.
  24. That “honey thing” is called a honey dipper (also honey wand and honey drizzler).  If you surf the web you’ll see that many people don’t quite get why a honey dipper is better than a spoon, but for those that grew up with one, they know that it’s the ONLY way to serve honey.
  25. In 1 tablespoon of honey, there are 64 calories, none of which are fat calories.
  26. Honey is the only food humans eat that is produced by an insect.
  27. Honey is the only food that includes everything humans need to sustain life, including water, enzymes, minerals, and vitamins.
  28. When honey hits our tables, it’s typically 17% water.
  29. Remember we said that honey never expires?  Well, that’s true, but it has to be properly stored.  If moisture is reintroduced to the honey, it can begin to ferment.
  30. 30 years ago, the average honey price was $.30 per pound.  Today, the average price is pushing $6.00 per pound.  Let’s say you stumbled upon grandpa’s secret stash of honey – a 30 year old 50 gallon bucket to be exact.  That bucket of honey was only worth $125 back then, but today it’d be worth $2,500!  Thanks grandpa.
  31. Pediatricians warn against giving children less than 1 years of age honey because there has been harmful bacterium Clostridium botulinum spores found in honey.  These spores can cause botulism in young children because they don’t produce the stomach acids and protective digestive bacteria needed to break down these spores.
  32. 1 cup of sugar can be replaced by ¾ cup of honey.  Just make sure to reduce liquids in the recipe by ¼ cup.  If you aren’t using sour cream or sour milk in the recipe, make sure to throw in a pinch of baking soda as well (this helps reduce acidity levels in the honey).
  33. When making particular recipes with honey, there are additional things to note.  Like jellies and jams should be cooked at a higher temperature and candies should be beaten longer.
  34. But higher baking temperatures are not recommended for most recipes.  To keep recipes from getting to brown, lower the oven temperature by 25⁰ F.
  35. In stored honey, if crystallization occurs, it doesn’t mean the honey is bad.  Just stick the container in hot water until the crystals dissolve away.
  36. But don’t boil it: getting honey too hot can change the flavor and withdraws the pollen that’s naturally present.
  37. Ever heard of mead?  Referred to a lot in older novels, mead is a wine made from honey.
  38. There are a lot of honey fakes out there.  It has been found mixed with sugar syrup, corn syrup, glucose, dextrose, molasses, invert sugar, flour, starch, and many, many other fillers.
  39. To slap on a “Pure Honey” label, manufacturers have to add an unidentified amount of pure honey.  So, the “Pure Honey” could be only 5% pure honey, and the other 95% just fillers, but you’ll still pay the price of expensive honey.
  40. All of those fillers that go into honey have to natural ingredients. They may be fillers, but by law, they’ll always be natural fillers.
  41. It’s rather hard to test for pure honey, but there are a lot of different methods that people have come up with to test for pureness.  Unfortunately, none of these have been proven to be 100% accurate, so make sure you do your research to find out the truth.  Hint, use the Internet to find the real stuff, we thought Honey.com was a great resource.
  42. To help soothe allergies, take 1 teaspoon of honey per day.  The honey helps your body develop a resistance to pollen, which helps reduce overall allergies.
  43. Skin burns can also be soothed with honey.  Mix an even amount of honey with cod liver oil and rub over the burn.  Keep the burn wrapped up, and change daily.  You should see that the healing process is much quicker.
  44. It’s believed that the use of honey to help heal wounds dates back to the ancient Greeks in 50 AD.  We don’t know how the Greeks knew it had medicinal powers, but medical professionals have found that honey creates a barrier to moisture and prevents dressings from sticking to the wound.  It’s also believed to provide other nutrients and chemicals that help to speed up healing.
  45. Try a teaspoon of honey to help soothe a sore throat or bad cough.
  46. Honey is lower in glycemic than normal table sugar; meaning, it doesn’t raise blood sugar levels as quickly as sugar does.
  47. Athletes take honey to help improve endurance, strength, and performance.  During a work-out, a teaspoon of honey can help give you the extra boost needed to keep going.
  48. Athletes that take honey before and after workouts show to have faster recovery time than those that don’t take honey at all.
  49. Ever heard, “…we can put a man on the moon, but we still have no idea how a bumble bee can fly?”  Yeah, that’s not true, sorry.
  50. Bees are being used to sniff out bombs.  Seriously, a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory has formed the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project where bees are being trained to detect explosives.


We’re no doctors around here; we just dig into the Interwebs and find all of this fun information.  We tried our best to give credit where credit was due, but when it comes to medical information, you should ALWAYS contact your doctor before following advice you find online.

Other honey articles on the Back Burner:

Chefs Make Their Own Honey
FOOD ALERT: Be Wary of These Controversial & Fake Foods

About Kasy Allen

Kasy Allen is the owner and lead marketing strategist of Annapurna Digital, a digital marketing agency. In addition to working with Tundra Restaurant Supply with their online marketing strategies, Kasy has helped many online brands find their online voice and an online marketing strategy that brings in the right users and increased revenue. When not in the office, Kasy can be found exploring the great outdoors of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

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